Grant knelt and removed a small cover from the carriage. Beneath it lay a slotted metal arm with a bright scrape along its edge. He touched it, frowned, and asked for an Allen key.
Leo watched closely. For the first time his anger gave way to concentration. “That piece wasn’t in the design you showed me,” he said.
“It’s an adjustment,” Grant replied.
“But it moves the brake anchor.”
Caleb looked at Leo. The boy’s mechanical eye was working again, free from the pressure of the crowd. “Exactly,” he said. “Now what happens if the cart is turning left and you need to brake hard?”
Leo stared at the rear wheel. “It might steer more than I ask.”
“Or much less,” Odessa said. “And the driver won’t know which until the load changes.”
Silas tried to stop the conversation. “Grant can tighten the adjustment. That’s why we have experts.”
“Not during a race with children waiting,” Reuben answered. He turned the red flag upright. “The Lightning Class is suspended until every cart is cleared with its actual running parts.”
The announcement brought groans from spectators. Grant started gathering his tools. Silas stood alone by the microphone, looking as though the day had become a personal betrayal.
Then a little girl rushed from the food stalls shouting that another Lightning Class cart was already missing from its place at the starting line.
CHAPTER SIX: THE EMPTY STARTING SPACE
The missing cart belonged to fourteen-year-old Becca Lin, who had built a blue, arrow-shaped racer with her older sister. It was less elaborate than Leo’s machine and had passed Caleb’s initial inspection. Yet it was no longer in its bay. Its helmet and wheel blocks remained behind, and a track marshal swore she had seen two people pushing it toward a service lane beyond the crowd.
Caleb felt the day tilt toward genuine danger. Reuben had suspended the class, but the gathering was large and the race course was not surrounded by walls. The service lane connected to the steepest part of the hill. Anyone pushing a cart there could start downhill before volunteers understood what was happening.
Becca’s sister Mina ran up with tears in her eyes. “She isn’t answering her phone.”
Silas seized the microphone. “Nobody panic. We’re checking a missing piece of equipment.”
Odessa turned to Caleb. “Somebody is trying to make the canceled class happen anyway.”
Grant shook his head. “Nobody would be that irresponsible.”
But Caleb remembered that Silas had spent weeks telling the teenagers that the exhibition would put them on the map. Some of the racers thought the committee had promised them something far larger than one day of fun. If the official event was canceled, an unofficial run might feel like a chance to prove themselves.
